Author Platform as Building Community: John Jantsch [podcast]

Do you think of your writing as a small business? How much time and effort do you put into growing that business? Does it sputter along from one published book to the next–or from one unsold manuscript to the next?

John Jantsch, author of several books including The Commitment Engine: Making Work Worthy It (Portfolio-Penguin, 2012) and has served small businesses through Duck Tape Marketing. You can download a 30-minute podcast or listen to it on Marketing Profs.

He presents at least two provocative thoughts or questions for your writing business:

What would you have to do differently to double or triple your revenues?

To grow, you need a community; in what ways are you developing community?

Many small businesses–and this is certainly true of mine–when thinking about grown, think in terms of 5 percent or 10 percent. So the goal is adding one more client each month or getting a third manuscript in first-draft form before Christmas 2013.

But doubling or tripling your revenues requires picking out one or two key items and then building a team to handle other, less important things. Building a team is the beginning of building community.

That leads to the second insight. Many of us have product- or sales-focused websites. We join groups to talk to new persons about our books and potential success. All of this is about what we want. John, in contrast, focuses on building a community–giving back, sharing big visions, bringing persons together. That’s what builds not only referrals (a previous book of his) but also commitment.

I speak with many authors who have little done to build their author platform. John shows how to address this publishing need, but in a big way.